Heartbreak had looked good on her
by HK145
Summary: Gillian and Cal see someone in the street. Someone they haven't seen for 5 years.


Just a little one shot that I couldn't get out of my mind!

I don't own Lie to me, it's stories or it's characters.

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It's been 5 years since Gill came to me in the middle of the night, with swollen eyes and tears falling down here cheeks. Since I pulled her into my arms without a single question. Since I held her in silence, while sobs wracked her tiny frame. Since she whispered into the darkness of my hallway that they'd taken her daughter.

It's been 5 years, since I saw the pain a her that I would never forget. Her Sophie pain. A pain that I thought she would never escape. But, she did. Time after all, is the worlds greatest healer. Eventually, her tears stopped. Her smile returned. Her eyes shone again. Her heartbreak faded. She pieced herself back together. Sure, it took time. But she did it. She stopped seeing Sophie in every child that she saw. She stopped imagining her life as if Sophie had never been taken. Piece by piece she returned to herself. She returned to me. And we moved on.

It's been 5 years, and suddenly she's right back to that night. To that pain. Which means, so am I.

It's a wintery morning, with snow threatening to fall, but she's insisted on us walking to get coffee from somewhere down the street. She muttered something about the one we have in our kitchen not being good enough, but I wasn't really listening. I didn't need an explanation. She wanted me to go with her, when she could have easily gone on her own, and that's all I care about.

I swear, that women could be the death of me. She could sway into my office, in that way she does, look at me with those glistening eyes of hers, and ask me to walk to the end of the earth with her. And I would. No explanation needed. All she's ever had to do was ask. Hell, she's never even needed to ask. I'd walk to the end of the earth without her asking, if I thought it would make her happy. Even just for a second.

Which is how I've come to be walking the streets. Freezing. For a coffee I don't even want. But it's worth it. She loves the cold. Loves winter and everything it brings. She laughing and joking, and animated in a way I haven't seen for a while. Things have been hectic and stressful at work, so I'm hanging on her every movement. I'm studying her face, watching each joyful expression wash over her. I'm so caught up in the beauty of her, how mesmerising she looks when she smiles, that it takes my brain a second to catch up with the fact the she's no longer beside me. It takes my brain a second to register that she's stopped dead in her tracks, and her glorious, magical smile has been replaced with a pain that I hoped never to see again.

' _Love, are you ok?'_

It's a stupid question really. I know she's not. I know that whatever it is that's caused her be wearing her Sophie pain in the middle of the street, means that she's definitely not ok.

I follow her gaze and that's when my heart stops.

It's been 5 years, and just like Gill, I will never forget that little girl's face. Gill will never forget it, because, well, no mother could ever forget their daughters face. I will never forget it, simply because of how much she meant to Gill.

Which is how I know, with absolute certainty, that the little girl Gill is staring at is Sophie. The girl with her hand wrapped in another woman's, and make a bee-line straight towards us, is Sophie.

' _Gill, love.'_

I try, but I can't find the words. Can't seem to form a coherent thought. So I just stand there watching. Helpless to stop what's happening.

I watch as Gill tares her eyes away from Sophie, long enough to catch eyes with the woman. Amanda. They met once, I remember. Way back at the beginning of all this. Gill and Alec went to Delaware to meet her. She'd wanted to know the people that were going to become the parents of her child. I hadn't thought it to be a good idea, but Gill hadn't been able to say no. ' _She's giving me her baby Cal. I'd give her my kidney if she wanted it',_ she'd said, with a look in her eyes that told me she was telling the truth, and that she didn't really care about my opinion on the matter.

There's a flash of recognition on both of them. Gill never forgetting the face of the women who made all her dreams come true, only to cruelly rip them away. Amanda, apparently not forgetting Gills face either. To the untrained eye, it would have looked like nothing more than two strangers catching each others eye for a split second. To me, there was so much more. I saw the fear, and the guilt cross Amanda's face. The unspoken apology. It wasn't there for long but it was there. I saw it. And I'm telling you that Gill saw it too.

There's a moment, as they brush past us, that I hear Sophie's voice. She's babbling away to Amanda about everything and nothing. The way that little girls talk to their mother's. Gill hears it too. I know by the way her face moves, her eyes wide and her eyebrows shooting towards her hairline. Surprise. It strikes me then, that she's just heard her daughters first words. Just heard her daughters voice. A voice she never thought she would hear.

They don't stop, and as quickly as they appeared, they're gone. Gill turns, her gaze following them until they're out of sight. Her eyes focused on Sophie's back, watching her daughter walk away, and out of her life again.

She turns back to me then, and I'm trying to prepare myself for the pain I saw on her mere moments ago. The pain I know she's still going to be wearing. I'm trying to prepare myself for the heartache and tears. I'm so busy trying to prepare myself and find the right words to say, that I'm slow again. I look at her and it takes me a while to register that I'm not looking at pain and heartache at all.

I watch her as she studies my face, reading the confusion that I don't even think to hide. I watch her watching me. I watch her as she stands in silence, slowly processing what has just happened. And then she speaks and I release a breath I didn't even know I'd been holding.

' _She's ok Cal',_ she whispers to me slowly, ' _she's really ok'._

And then she smiles at me, I mean really smiles at me, and I realise that I've been wrong this whole time. And for the third time in a matter of minutes, all I can do is stand there and watch her.

I watch as the last 5 years of pain melt away from her. I watch as a weight I didn't even know she was carrying lifts off her shoulders. I watch as a light that I hadn't noticed was missing returns to her eyes. I watch as all the tiny pieces of Gillian that Sophie had taken with her, all the tiny piece of Gillian I hadn't known still needed to be found, returned.

Boy had I been wrong.

She hadn't forgotten. She hadn't stopped living in the what if. She hadn't stopped looking for Sophie in every little girls' face. She hadn't moved on. How could she. How could any mother move on, without knowing that their child was ok?

But she did now. She knew her baby girl was ok. Sophie may not be hers anymore, but she was ok. And to Gill, that's all that mattered.

She glanced over her shoulder one last time, to the spot on the corner of the street, where Sophie had disappeared out of sight. She smiled again, and then her attention was back on me.

 _'_ _So, coffee?'_

Then she spun on her heal, and headed in the direction of the café that we'd been heading for not five minutes earlier.

Heartbreak had looked good on her.

Heartbreak had looked so good on her, that I hadn't even realised that she had been wearing it at all.

As I watched her walk, a newfound bounce in her stride, I realised that no matter how good heartbreak had looked on her, nothing would ever look as good as the freedom that now encased her.

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 _Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed. Please review. For those who are reading 'It means everything', i'm working on the next chapter.. i just couldn't focus with this little ficlet bouncing round my brain!_


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